


What's Done Is Done

by Symphoenae



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Callum has an emotion breakdown whoops, F/M, Mostly Callum-Centric, Take my writing allowance away, based off of a tumblr post I saw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22109443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symphoenae/pseuds/Symphoenae
Summary: He isn't there when she wakes up. It's still the middle of the night, and it's only been a few days since Zym and Zubeia finally reunited. Everyone's still at the Storm Spire, hanging around for a little while until they all have to get back to what they must. She and Callum were staying in a room together, sometimes Rayla wonders if this room had been her parents' rooms at some point- no one really talked about it. After the battle, and the fall, neither one of them felt particularly comfortable being too far apart in the night where their fears overpowered their logic.
Relationships: Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 86





	What's Done Is Done

**Author's Note:**

> Have you considered that I shouldn't be allowed to write for this show
> 
> I still have no clue how to write well for these characters. I'm too used to giant lesbian space rocks man. God help me

He isn't there when she wakes up. It's still the middle of the night, and it's only been a few days since Zym and Zubeia finally reunited. Everyone's still at the Storm Spire, hanging around for a little while until they all have to get back to what they must. She and Callum were staying in a room together, sometimes Rayla wonders if this room had been her parents' rooms at some point- no one really talked about it. After the battle, and the fall, neither one of them felt particularly comfortable being too far apart in the night where their fears overpowered their logic.

She worried, of course. Anytime Callum went off on his own somewhere without her knowing made her anxious, despite him not being defenseless anymore. Xadia was still as dangerous as ever, the majority of the population still not fond of humankind. He didn’t even leave his scarf for her like he usually did- which worried her even more.

The nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right spurred her to leave the warmth of their bed. In the darkness, she found her first clue- one of their extra blankets had been abandoned haphazardly on the floor. Her eyebrows furrowed as she took in the sight- it looked like it had been fought against. Whoever had been entangled in it struggled in a blind panic to get it off and flee. Rayla could feel her heart beat faster in her chest as the signs of something being terribly wrong stacked up.

She exited their room swiftly at that point, glancing down the halls in each direction, wondering where exactly he could’ve gone. She considered the pinnacle for a moment, but decided against it. Neither one of them had really dared to go back up there in the past few days. The longer she spent looking for Callum all around the Storm Spire with no success, the more frantic she was becoming. Everyone else was asleep and while she didn’t want to be the one who disturbs someone from sleep, she was seriously considering getting some help trying to find her dumb human mage of a boyfriend.

Her thoughts were silenced, however, when she found him sitting on the bridge in front of the spire’s entrance. Despite herself, a smile began to grow on her face at the sight of him, but that smile quickly vanished when she truly took in his look. He had his legs dangling off the side in between the ropes, and she could see him in a side-profile. His face was… something else. His eyes were wild and shiny, mouth set in a grimace as if he was trying to hold himself together. His hands held a pencil and his sketchbook respectively, the hand with the pencil scribbling furiously and somewhat uncoordinated. Something about the state he was in startled her enough to hesitate instead of calling out to him- just for a moment, but that was enough.

With a strangled cry, Callum suddenly stood up, tossing his sketchbook aside. She could see his chest heaving with his hyperventilating, before she heard him bite out a “ _ manus pluma volantis” _ . She watched with worried eyes as his arms transformed into his brown mage’s wings. He launched himself up over the ropes of the bridge and put himself into a nose-dive down, down, down to the bottom of the spire and out of sight. When he was gone, Rayla snapped out of her freeze and rushed over to his abandoned sketchbook. He never left his sketchbook behind like this- thrown across the floor, pages still open… what was this drawing he’d made?

Rayla held the sketchbook closer, peering at the crudely drawn image. It was in the point of view of someone looking down a cliff face- there was a battle below. She knew exactly what battle that was. What concerned her the most was that there were a few sun-cursed soldiers drawn in such a way that looked like they were falling- falling to their deaths. The final piece of the puzzle hit her when she noticed what looked like to be the tail-ends of electricity drawn into the scene. It clicked then. Days after the battle, Callum must have worked himself up into such a state over what happened to these people he blasted off the ledge. Considering the things she’d heard of the battle- how they were immune to fire, but could be felled by arrows just like any other living creature, she assumed that they could be felled by falling to their deaths too.

_ Oh, Callum…  _ He’d taken life, more lives than she had now. The thought of her sweet prince having a higher body count than her disturbed her on another level, and it clearly disturbed and upset him too. But this wasn’t the time to stand around and realize what was bothering him so much- he’d gone off to fly by himself in a horrible mental state, this couldn’t end well. She had to find him… but how? As much as she could run faster than him normally, he was in the air, and flight was always faster. On top of that, she didn’t even know where he could be headed, oh, this was a disaster…!

A huff snapped her out of her mild panic, and she turned to see the same red dragon that Ezran had ridden before staring at her. She fumbled with her words for a moment, before asking:

“Oh… Could you possibly help me find Callum?”

The dragon peered at her, as if to test her- for what she didn’t know- before lowering itself down a little further to offer Rayla an easier mount. She breathed a sigh of relief, uttering a quiet thank you before climbing on, and the two of them took flight, following exactly the way Callum had gone.

* * *

_ Panic, panic, oh god you’ve killed people, sun-cursed or not they still were once people, they had lives to live and you completely snuffed that out- _

Callum was vaguely aware of the fact he was even flying at this point. His turmoiled mind had forgotten what he was doing and where he was going as soon as he left the ground. He couldn’t even really see, everything was blurry and shifting, he couldn’t even tell if it was from tears that he was blinded or if he was genuinely about to pass out from the stress.

_ I never wanted this I never wanted someone else’s life in my hands I never wanted to be the reason someone’s loved one is never coming back, oh god, I did this- _

He didn’t notice he was losing altitude.

_ What right do I have to… to…. Ack! _

His whirling thoughts were interrupted by the feeling of crashing- he’d hit the ground without realizing it. He tumbled across the grass for a moment, before stopping laid on his back, wings sprawled out. His eyes were still wide and wild as he stared up, looking directly at the stone chin of Avizandum himself. He’d flown all the way back to the final resting place of the Dragon King. He shifted cautiously, getting to his knees but not dispelling his wings. His breaths were still somewhat ragged and quick, but somehow, looking at the dragon before him kept his mind focused enough to figure out what to do next.

“You and I… shared the same Arcanum.” He began slowly, trying his best to hold it together. “Same, but so very different… You’ve killed countless humans, haven’t you? So many people you struck down without a hint of remorse… You never cared about the families you destroyed, did you?” Callum growled. “DID YOU?!”

He swayed slightly. “You… I will never be like you. Killing is something I never wanted to do, but a fall like that… I don’t think those people could have survived. I will never be like you, because I will mourn the lives that I mistakenly took, no matter who or what they were. Human, Elf, Dragon, anything. Every life deserves a chance but you never saw it that way for humans, and that's where you were wrong. That was your downfall.”

_ Breathe, Callum. Just breathe… you need to calm down.  _ His mind screamed at him. The impact of his rough landing was getting to him a little bit now, his body growing sore and stiff. But something in him felt the need to justify himself to this statue here, to say aloud he was a better person, to convince himself that what he’d done wasn’t in cold blood. He cast away his wings, his arms returning feeling battered and bruised, but he held them up and drew a familiar rune. He wasn’t quite sure what his goal was anymore, but all of these feelings, all of this guilt, it needed to escape.

“ _ Fulminous!”  _ He screamed, with more vigor than he ever had.The resulting bolt from his hand was large and vicious, cast up into the sky with a great range, almost making it to the clouds above before the energy exploded in the air and left nothing but the smell of ozone. Callum sighed, falling onto his back again.

“I’m okay. What happened has happened, it was never my intention, but I can’t undo it now. I just have to… breathe.” He paused. “What’s done is done.” Another pause. “As much as it sucks to admit, I don’t think they had much of a life to keep living at that point. What Viren did to them… that curse… they were almost like animals then…”

He sat alone like that for a few moments, just focusing on his breathing. In, out. In, out. The night in Xadia never ceased to awe him. If he hadn’t thrown away his sketchbook in a crazed daze, he would have been sketching the moon and the stars above him as he looked. But as time continued to pass, he noticed something else high above him in the sky, among some of the clouds. A dragon, judging by the wingspan. Despite himself, his heart rate spiked as fear crept into every inch of him. A dragon was still a dragon- not every dragon had yet heard of what had happened at the spire. He could be an easy kill if it was anything like Sol Regem.

He wondered if he should stay still or move to hide- he wasn’t sure if it had seen him. But his question was answered as he saw it begin to descend in circles above him.   
  
“Oh… Oh that’s probably not good…” Callum mumbled to himself, now making to get up. He hissed as his body protested- that tumble had really banged him up more than he thought. The dragon was getting closer and closer with each second, and he was beginning to think he could die right here and now. Until…

“Callum!”

He heard the call from above. Was that the dragon, calling to him? No, it couldn’t be, he knew that voice… it was…

“Rayla?” He questioned in confusion. What was she doing here? How’d she find him?

The dragon finally landed, and Callum recognized it as one of Ezran’s friends, so to speak. Rayla leapt off its back and immediately ran over to him, capturing his face in her hands, pressing kisses to his cheeks.

“You big dumb human, you had me worried sick! I woke up and you were gone, and then I saw you take a dive off of the spire like it was nothing, and oh… don’t ever do that again!” Rayla reprimanded him, but he could hear the edge of relief in her tone.

Despite everything, he managed a small laugh. “Sorry Rayla. I just… had a lot on my mind.”

Her expression fell into one of pity. “I know. I saw, Callum.” She held out her hand which held his sketchbook.

Callum met her eyes, and he felt his lip quiver and his eyes water all over again. She sighed sorrowfully, opening her arms. “Come here, my sad prince.”

He didn’t protest, practically falling into her embrace, wrapping his arms around her waist tightly as he shook with sobs he was trying to keep at bay. “It’s just… I’d never killed anyone before then. I never wanted to either.”

Rayla rubbed her hands over his back in an attempt to soothe him. “Hey… Maybe they didn’t die? We don’t exactly know the capabilities of a sun-cursed human. They were immune to fire, sure, and could be killed with arrows, yes, but maybe they survived their fall?” She paused. “You didn’t specifically see them die, did you?”

Callum shook his head into her shoulder. “I didn’t have time. Prince Kasef attacked me right after I blasted them off the cliff. He nearly got me too… If Queen Aanya and her army had been just a few seconds later, I think I would’ve choked to death.” He frowned. “He tore my sketchbook too. It actually saved me from his initial attack.”

Rayla pulled away so she could look at him again. “Hey. I’m glad you’re still here, with me. I may not be the best at your ‘Big Feelings Time’ stuff, but you know you can talk to me, right? Whenever you need me. We do this together, no matter what it is.”

Callum smiled at her through his tears, grateful to have her with him. She was his ship in the swirling sea of his own thoughts, his savior. Nothing could change that.

“We do it together.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Based on that shit where it was like "Hey Callum has a higher body count than Rayla" but it's never confirmed if the sun cursed humans he yeeted off the cliff died from fall damage or not so I choose to believe that maybe they did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> ANYWAYS here's a link to my Discord server! In my other two fics for this show I didn't link it because most of the members are of a different fandom but I GOT SOME OF THE BITCHES to watch TDP and they're begging for TDP friends (aka my gf) so why don't you come join us? It's a shit show of memes and horrible posts if you're into that  
> https://discord.gg/9y5PTa3
> 
> (Pls join we need fresh meat) ((Also I hope you enjoyed that Discord insert of me, a hack fraud writer, attempting this fic))


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